Enhancing Resilience to Climate and Ecosystem Changes in Semi-Arid Africa: an Integrated Approach

Adaptation strategies for mitigating the impacts of climate and ecosystem changes on developing societies
Coping with global climate and ecosystem changes requires developing countries with fragile socio-economic and resource management infrastructures to devise adaptation strategies. This project aims at developing an integrated strategy to build a community based management system which is resilient to climate and ecosystem changes as well as capable of maintaining optimum socio-economic standards and resource levels. By integrating research approaches based on extreme weather and climate, ecosystems and governance in underdeveloped semi-arid northern Ghana, the project recommends that effective strategies should involve a rural development agenda as well as flood and drought associated risk management in communities along the Volta River. The strategies should also lead to alleviating the economic disparity between northern Ghana and the rapidly growing south.

Disseminating the integrated resilience strategy to other semi-arid areas of Africa
Based on community field survey of major crops as well as investigation of climate and ecosystems, the project assesses impacts of climate change on agriculture and rural development, and develops infrastructure and local capacity to cope with frequent flood and drought events along the Volta River. The research process leads to integrated strategies that enhance resilience of farming communities in northern Ghana to cope with climate and ecosystem changes and other disasters. These strategies are made available as "the Ghana Model", which can be applied to similar situations in semi-arid regions of Africa.